Application of molecular markers for detection of South American camelid illegal traffic

DI ROCCO F.; POSIK D.M.; RIPOLI M.V.; DÍAZ, S.; GIOVAMBATTISTA G.; VIDAL RIOJA L.

Buenos Aires

Congreso; 23 World Congress of the International Society for Forensic Genetics; 2009

International Society for Forensic Genetics

South American camelids comprises the two wild species guanaco (Lama guanicoe) and vicuña (Vicugna vicugna), and their respective domestic derivatives llama (L. glama) and alpaca (L. pacos). Species-specific identification by DNA analysis have been successfully used to solve animal illegal traffic casework. The aim of the present study was to determine the species-specific origin of a confiscated alleged alpaca herd and evaluate the usefulness of the mitochondrial and autosomal markers in resolving judicial cases. Genomic DNA was obtained by DNAzol technique from 25 samples of  sequestered domestic camelid proceeding from Court of Jujuy province, Argentina. Cytb and COXI mitochondrial genes fragments and seven nuclear microsatellites were typed. Phylogenetic analysis of the obtained mitochondrial sequences and camelid sequences available at GenBank were performed using the Network software. Comparison between microsatellite allelic distribution of casework and llama reference samples revealed two microsatellite loci with non-overlapped genetic profiles due to the presence of private alleles. This result suggests that confiscated animals could be of alpaca origin instead of llama. Mitochondrial results were non conclusive since 18 samples showed haplotypes corresponding to guanaco haplogroup while the remaining 7 belonged to vicuña lineage. Noteworthy, reference llama and alpaca sequences were also distributed in both haplogroups. These data are in agreement with previous studies which describe the occurrence of extensive hybridization between domestic camelid species. Accordingly, mitochondrial DNA analysis is useless for domestic camelid species-specific identification. In contrast, microsatellites that present private alleles result useful for discriminating between these species.